“A severed human head sprouting enormous ears for wings, flying through the night with a chilling 'tué-tué' cry.”
On moonless nights over the fields of southern Chile, country people listen for a cry that no bird should make: tué, tué, tué. Tradition answers that it is the Chonchón — a human head that has left its body, sprouted feathers and talons, and taken flight on ears grown monstrous enough to serve as wings. It is the night-shape of a kalku, a sorcerer of the Mapuche tradition, abroad on errands nobody wants to imagine.
The Chonchón is heard far more often than it is seen, and the tradition explains why: the flying head is invisible to ordinary eyes, perceptible only to other sorcerers and to those who seek their power. What remains for everyone else is the call, and the dread it carries — for the cry of the Chonchón is a dire omen, often read as foretelling the death of someone dear to the listener.
The Legend
The transformation is voluntary and precise. A kalku — in many tellings a woman who has entered a contract with a brujo — anoints the throat with a magical cream, and by night the head detaches from the body, sprouts feathers and talons, and lifts into the air on its enormous ears. The body stays behind, and therein lies the sorcerer's one great vulnerability: if the body is moved or turned while the head is abroad, the return becomes perilous.
Aloft, the Chonchón carries all the magical powers of the kalku it belongs to. Its business is mischief and worse: the call of tué, tué, tué is a dire omen, and its arrival over a house is read as death circling the family inside. The legend travels well beyond the Mapuche heartlands — versions are told across Chile and into Argentina, and folklorists have noted cousins of the ominous night-bird as far away as Venezuela, Ecuador, and Mexico.
The Record
The Chonchón is among the better-documented creatures of Chilean folklore. Julio Vicuña Cifuentes collected it in his 1915 compilation Mitos y Supersticiones recogidos de la tradición oral chilena, reading the flying heads as a special class of brujo — the most powerful and feared practitioners of black magic. The figure even shadowed the courts: legal proceedings against alleged witches in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries feature the creature in testimony.
The collected tales are concrete. In Limache, a Solomon's seal drawn on the ground was said to have brought down a large bird with red wattles. In Galvarino, a Mapuche man who discovered his wife was a chonchón turned her body face-down while the head was abroad; the returning creature, unable to rejoin it, appeared as a dog that pleaded until the body was righted. Folklorists set such accounts alongside the owl-lore they resemble — the rufous-legged owl flies the same dark on silent wings.
The Lore
Tradition supplies a full kit of countermeasures. A Solomon's seal drawn on the ground can force the flyer down; so can laying out a waistcoat in a prescribed manner, or reciting set phrases — 'Jesus goes ahead, follow him behind' — or the Magnificat. Gentlest of all is the shout 'Come back tomorrow for some salt!', which compels the sorcerer to return in human form the next day, sheepishly asking for the promised gift and unmasking themselves in the bargain.
Behind the horror sits an old acoustic mystery: something does call in the southern night, and the rufous-legged owl gliding on silent wings is the naturalists' favourite suspect. But the legend refuses the reduction. From the far north of Chile to Patagonia the tué-tué endures in popular belief, and the Chonchón remains a byword for hidden malice — the neighbour who by day borrows salt and by night wears wings.
Field Notes
- ✦ Reciting set phrases or laying out a waistcoat in a prescribed manner can force it to the ground.
- ✦ The night-shape of a kalku, the feared sorcerer of Mapuche tradition.
- ✦ Its tué-tué cry is often traced by sceptics to owls calling in the dark.
- ✦ Shouting 'come back tomorrow for salt' compels the sorcerer to return in human form to claim it.
- ✦ Collected by Julio Vicuña Cifuentes in his 1915 compilation of Chilean oral tradition.
Case File
- Classification
- Sorcerer transformation
- Category
- Winged/Flying
- Territory
- Central and southern Chile (Mapuche lands)
- First Sighted
- Mapuche folklore
- Habitat
- Night skies over rural areas
- Reported Size
- Head-sized
- Also Known As
- Chon-chon · Tué-tué